| Description |
xi, 276 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm |
| Contents |
Before Darwin -- Darwin and after -- Pithecanthropus -- The early twentieth century -- Out of Africa... -- ...Always something new -- The synthesis -- Olduvai Gorge -- Rama's ape meets the mighty molecule -- Omo and turkana -- Hadar, Lucy, and Laetoli -- Theory intrudes -- Eurasia and Africa: odds and ends -- Turkana and Olduvai-again -- The cave-man vanishes -- Candelabras and continuity -- Where are we? |
| Summary |
One of the most remarkable fossil finds in history occurred in Laetoli, Tanzania, in 1974, when anthropologist Andrew Hill (diving to the ground to avoid a lump of elephant dung thrown by a colleague) came face to face with a set of ancient footprints captured in stone - the earliest recorded steps of our far-off human ancestors, some three million years old. Today we can see a recreation of the making of the Laetoli footprints at the American Museum of Natural History in a stunning diorama which depicts two of our human forebears walking side by side through a snowy landscape of volcanic ash. But how do we know what these three-million-year-old relatives looked like? How have we reconstructed the eons-long journey from our first ancient steps to where we stand today? In short, how do we know what we think we know about human evolution? |
|
In The Fossil Trail, Ian Tattersall, the head of the Anthropology Department at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us on a sweeping tour of the study of human evolution, offering a colorful history of fossil discoveries and a revealing insider's look at how these finds have been interpreted - and misinterpreted - through time. All the major figures and discoveries are here. We meet Lamarck and Cuvier and Darwin (we learn that Darwin's theory of evolution, though a bombshell, was very congenial to a Victorian ethos of progress), right up to modern theorists such as Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould |
| Analysis |
Humans Evolution |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-262) and index |
|
Includes index and bibliographical references |
| Notes |
Also available as an electronic book via the World Wide Web to institutions affiliated with netLibrary, Inc |
| Subject |
Paleoanthropology.
|
|
Fossil hominids.
|
|
Human evolution.
|
|
Anthropology, Prehistoric.
|
| LC no. |
94031633 |
| ISBN |
0195061012 acid-free paper |
|
0195109813 paperback |
|
0585111782 electronic bk |
|
